FLYING HIGH

New York Might Get a Brand-New LaGuardia Airport

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Monday that the state would completely revamp LaGuardia Airport. The governor detailed the $4 billion project with Vice President Joe Biden by his side—a fitting invite, given Biden’s past complaints about the airport.

Biden said last year that the airport reminded him of “a third-world country.” The new airport, should its final form look like the renderings presented on Monday, looks more like a sleek, modern concourse with a unified terminal.

Cuomo said construction of the new airport would add 8,000 direct jobs and another 10,000 indirect jobs. LaGuardia Gateway Partners, a public-private partnership, will manage the job.

Delta Airlines is also expected to revamp its terminals at LaGuardia, which the state says constitutes the second half of the “new unified terminal structure.”

“We are transforming LaGuardia into a globally-renowned, 21st century airport that is worthy of the city and state of New York,” Cuomo said. “It’s the perfect metaphor for what we can achieve with the ambition and optimism and energy that made this the Empire State in the first place, and I want to thank our many partners for joining us to build the airport that New York deserves.”

The board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey still has to approve the project. The state expects that approval to come through early next year, with half of the new airport opening to passengers in 2019.

Terminal B will be demolished and replaced with a larger structure, one that connects with the Delta’s C and D terminals. Delta will construct its new terminals “on a parallel track” with the state’s project.

Slightly relocating the terminals and introducing “an island-gate system”—creating pedestrian footbridges tall enough for planes to taxi under—will create nearly two miles of additional taxiway on the existing airport’s footprint. Cuomo is also calling for the eventual connection of AirTrain services to the airport, and an advisory panel suggested one day reopening the terminal to ferry service.

“I applaud Governor Cuomo and Vice President Biden for undertaking a revitalization of LaGuardia that promises to drive growth across the region and dramatically improve service for passengers,” said New York mayor Bill de Blasio. The state also shared supportive statements from former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Congressman Joe Crowley, and, memorably, Robert Moses biographer Robert Caro.